Moroccan security services arrested 30 suspects for their involvement in acts of extortion, threats, and trafficking of newborn babies in Fez.
The suspects include 18 security agents, a doctor, two nurses, healthcare professionals, and intermediaries, according to the Moroccan News Agency.
The agency quoted a security source as saying that the judicial police, in coordination with the General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST), arrested 30 people on suspicion of involvement in extortion, threats, manipulation, benefiting from public medical services, and trafficking newborn infants.
The source did not clarify the number of children trafficked by network.
Preliminary data from the investigation shows that individuals among the arrestees were acting as intermediaries in the sale of newborns in complicity with single mothers and in exchange for money.
They would then sell babies to families wishing to adopt abandoned children, the security source added.
According to the source, other suspects are presumed to be involved in acts of extortion against patients and their families in exchange for appointments for consultation, diagnosis, or visits, as well as intermediation in the illegal practice of abortion and the issuance of medical certificates containing false data.
Some of the detainees are also involved in the forgery of medical consultation appointments, theft, and waste of medical supplies as well as their sale, among other criminal charges.
Searches carried out at the homes of some of the arrested security agents enabled police to seize prescription-only medications, medications that are not for sale, medical equipment, and money.
Police put all the suspects in custody for further investigation to identify all criminal acts attributed to them, as well as to arrest possible accomplices involved in the crime.
